Various systems and methods have been developed for providing viewers of broadcast and cable television weather presentations with informative and accurate weather information. Typically, such systems provide a display of representations of weather phenomena, e.g., clouds, rain, storms, etc., overlaid on a map of a geographic area of interest. Such displays were originally created by drawing representations of weather phenomena, or placing pre-made weather phenomena symbols, on a physical map of an area of interest. The image of the map was then broadcast with a weather presenter positioned in front of the map to provide an explanation of the map display. Computer systems are now employed to facilitate the generation of such weather presentations, using computer-generated graphics and animation.
A typical computer-implemented system for preparing a weather report presentation will include detailed digital maps of geographic areas of interest stored for access by the computer. Weather information, such as satellite imagery and/or weather radar information, such as NEXRAD weather radar information provided by the government or live local radar data, is provided to the system. The system processes the received weather information that is then overlaid in graphical form on the digital maps to create a graphic display of the weather for a particular area of interest. The weather information received by the system may be processed to generate weather symbols, color contours, or other representations of the weather information that are overlaid on the digital maps to create the weather presentation. A series of such weather displays may be generated by the computer system, and played back in sequence to provide an animated image of the movement of weather phenomena through a geographic area. Such systems may provide an operator with various tools for selecting, e.g., the geographic location to be displayed, reference points to be displayed on the geographic map, e.g., cities, roads, borders, etc., the source of weather information to be displayed on the geographic map, e.g., satellite imagery or radar, and how the weather information will be presented, e.g., symbols, color contours, etc. An exemplary system and method for the preparation of graphical weather displays for broadcast as part of a weather report presentation, particularly for the preparation of weather displays that show the current and predicted path of severe weather, is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,747, which is assigned to Weather Central, Inc., the assignee of the present application, the details of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Although a variety of different types of weather information are used to generated weather displays to be used as part of broadcast and other weather report presentations, not all of the currently available types of weather information typically are automatically processed for inclusion in such presentations. Some types of weather information are provided currently from their respective weather information sources in a form that is useful only to a trained meteorologist or other professional who can interpret the information as provided and then manually or orally incorporate the information into a broadcast weather report presentation. In other cases available weather information may be presented to viewers of a weather report presentation in a manner such that it is difficult for the typical viewer to understand the significance of the information or how the information relates to a particular interested viewer. An example of weather information that is currently available but not currently presented as a part of weather presentations in a form that is useful to most viewers, if at all, is wind speed information.
Modern weather radar systems, such as the government's NEXRAD weather radar system, are able to provide wind velocity data in a graphical form. In the current commonly used presentation format, wind velocity information is presented based on the Doppler shift information that the radar system uses to determine wind velocity. That is, wind velocity information may typically be displayed by current systems as a graphical overlay on a geographic map display showing one color in areas with wind headed toward the radar site and another color in areas with wind headed away from the radar site. Wind intensity relative to the radar site is shown in the intensity or shading of the color in which the wind velocity is presented in the map display. From such a graphical presentation a trained professional can locate high wind areas, determine wind directions, observe rotational activity (e.g., tornadoes), and report on these to viewers of a weather report presentation. However, such a display of wind velocity (speed and direction) relative to a radar site in and of itself is difficult to comprehend for an average weather report viewer who simply wants to know how fast or strong the wind is blowing.
What is desired, therefore, is an improved system and method for presenting weather phenomenon information, specifically wind speed information, in a manner that is more easily understandable to viewers of televised and other weather report presentations. Such a presentation of wind speed information should be easy to interpret by individual viewers in a manner such that a viewer can immediately understand the significance of the weather information being presented to the individual viewer's specific location of interest. Such wind speed information preferably also may be presented to a user electronically in a personalized manner, e.g., via email, cellular phone, etc., such that the user is made aware of nearby wind speed alerts and/or the wind speed at the user's current location or other location of interest (home, work, school, vacation home, etc.).